


Tea with Sugar, Like Dying Stars

by confiscatedretina



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 07:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confiscatedretina/pseuds/confiscatedretina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old joke about trolls goes thus: as a species, you are all so vicious that you'll fight yourselves into extinction. When it's down to the last two trolls, one will most definitely kill the other. You hadn't meant it to be funny but everyone who ever heard it took the saying as such. It certainly has potential in this situation but you are far too frustrated to laugh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea with Sugar, Like Dying Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spockandawe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Down By The Water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3267008) by [spockandawe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/pseuds/spockandawe). 



> So this one time I got assigned to remix a fic by an author I greatly admire... Hope you like it, Spockandawe! :)

An old joke about trolls goes thus: as a species, you are all so vicious that you'll fight yourselves into extinction. When it's down to the last two trolls, one will most definitely kill the other. You hadn't meant it to be funny but everyone who ever heard it took the saying as such. It certainly has potential in this situation but you are far too frustrated to laugh.

"Glubbin'...shit-blooded... _beach_..." she hisses, most likely not thinking about jokes, proverbs, or anything beyond that she's lost.

Blood runs cold between your fingers, fuschia clashing with red painted claws. A last choking gasp brushes your cheek.

No.

The imperial 2x3dent was surprisingly light in your hands. It pins her in the space between sea and sand, imperial blood cresting with the sea foam atop wavelets that bouy up her black hair. She raises a pair of middle digits weakly and you spit in her face.

Try again.

She gasps into your mouth, a mix of ocean-chiled and iron hot blood spilling over your tongue. Her lamprey teeth split your lip when you snarled against her mouth, your fingers digging so deep into her gills that you scratch bone. You can feel her last convulsing, twitching swallow from the inside. Sometimes you just can't help yourself.

_Fuck._

This isn't working.

For a creature who has spent millennia wishing to die, you are finding the moment of it surprisingly hard to grasp. This is what you've been toiling toward: her hands red with steaming blood, a triumphant and haughty laugh the song which ushers you, finally, into rest. You didn't count on a lifetime of experience that would put her handful of millennia to shame. It's damn hard to lose on purpose after all those sweeps, especially to the troll whose success and very life you've honed to a fine edge at least thrice.

Within the past night, you've killed her over a dozen times, twitching back to the moment her ship touches ground with the migraine of a decrepit future still throbbing behind your eyes.

It seems, ironically, that you need some time to think.

A delicate twist of time shifts your view; starlight is shining crisply overhead in a clear midnight sky. You now stand as far from the fated beach as you can, dry desert sand rolling over your green shoes in a gentle breeze. Much better.

Most of Alternia is gentle nearly six hundred twelve sweeps after the apocalypse; it takes life to give cruelty and harshness any meaning. You've been too worn down the past few centuries to feel anything and it would be difficult to be upset at your own handiwork by this point. The sand and night wind pick flecks of dried blood from your skin.

Alternia sans its species, native and imported and, well, all life, is unexpectedly peaceful. You've spent lifetimes you stopped counting in the thick of things: politics, religion, rebellion, treason. It was your hand which instigated decades-long wars and the pettiest of personal rivalries, all at the behest of the planet's so-called first guardian. You've been worshipped, cursed, called everything from a demon to a goddess to Death Herself. Flattery by it all was a decision you made; really it's always been just a job you had no say in and the payment for which is only that it will all end eventually.

Assuming you can get things right. Which, for the first time in a very long while, you can't. Lacquered red claws dig into your palms, drawing blood. Dried fuschia mixes with hot fresh red. Again.

A tumble of sand-smoothed walls, all that's left of some vanished settlement of children, serves you for a seat. All of the satelites which once orbited this wasteland were knocked out by the meteors which haled the end of your species. There is only one other person who might have seen a night so clear and you'd rather not think about her just now. A shooting star streaks across the heavens while you pick blood from under one claw.

Two hours, eight minutes, and fifty-three seconds later, footsteps march with purpose toward you. The steps are crisp and solid, almost regal, but definitely not trollish. It's a little late in the universe for trolls. Given that everyone, more or less, that you've been tasked with ruining or killing is long dead, your sense of time and purpose fails you. The approaching stranger is a true unknown and it pricks at your dormant sense of curiosity.

She sits beside you, wearing a coat the same shade of fathomless green as your dress, starlight picking out velvety highlights in her wide-brimmed hat. Her skin is as old and blackened as your own but you can just see the faintest dusting of galaxies play across it from the corner of your eye. There's a saucer in each of her polished smooth hands, a steaming tea cup on each.

"Hello, Damara," her voice is husky rich with age. "It's nice to see you again."

You nod politely and take the proffered tea. East Alternian black with grains of sugar just beginning to dissolve, winking out one at a time. Just the way you like it. A smile twitches the corner of your red lips as you take a sip.

The two of you have never been formally introduced and her name isn't one you bothered to remember. You've seen her in your employer's house more than once, a guest he regards with fairly high esteem. She will die some nights from now, not long after your work is done. You were there when it happened but, refreshingly, had nothing to do with the incident. Guns have never really been your style.

A nebula drifts across one of her cheeks. "Life's so rich and full of possibilities, isn't it?" The weight of eternity hangs from every word. "It'd be a shame to throw it all away."

An undignified snort escapes you and there is a sense that she is smiling. You giggle in spite of yourself, a soft and strained noise. She's right: this is silly and you've been ridiculous. It's past time to finish your work so everyone can go home.

Smiling, you hand back the empty tea cup. "Thank you."

"The pleasure's been mine," she dips her chin lightly in your direction. "Good luck, dear."

"No luck," you pull the bone white wands from your hair. "All skill. Too much."

She chuckles. "True. You do have the little urchin at something of a disadvantage."

"Can let her win this once. Really she will be losing." You grin. "And he will be dead."

The stranger, now less so, nods and stands. She turns and you watch until the night swallows her up, until sand begins to fill her empty footsteps.

Wands crackling against your palms, you step into a hot twilight, wind and sea spray lashing at your dress while the imperial starship lands one more time. You don't even blink when she screams at you from the docking ramp.

"You rust blooded beach!" her voice is shrill, hair swirling in dark eddies around red-orange horns that pierce the sky.

"Not clever," you remark, monotone.

Meenah Piexes screams and you talk over her, reciting the words of her contract. It seems a little unfair that she gets to make a choice when you weren't given the option. Ah well. You punctuate the final clause with a rude gesture.

"I'll agree to anyfin if it means I get to fuckin' gut you, beach," she hisses.

You nod an affirmative. "Still not clever."

With an indignant screech she lunges. The taste of tea with sugar is still fresh in your mouth, just now growing bitter. She hisses as you slash her gills and then...then...!

Trident and ground seem to slam into you at the same moment. Sand plumes around you as blood pools, staining your much-hated green dress a bright, vivid red. It clots in the fabric under the force of wind and setting sun but keeps pumping freely from your body. She snarls something just out of hearing, blood loss making your ears ring, and you begin to laugh.

You've won! It hurts, fuck does it hurt, but you can't stop laughing, gut deep and heaving. You've won and it's over. Finally! Tears streaking down your cheeks, fingers tapping weakly against imperial gold splattered red, you watch the sun dissolve into a sweetened, delicious dark.


End file.
